A common reply from Democrats and Bush family-allied Republicans to charges of election fraud in the 2020 and 2022 elections is that those making the charge have “had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case.” In fact, in July 2022, The Hill proudly proclaimed that a conservative group found ‘absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud’ in the 2020 election. The Hill was unconcerned with the fact that this group is made up exclusively of Republicans closely tied to the Bush family, none of whom have forgotten that Donald Trump humiliated Jeb Bush during the 2016 presidential primary season.

Here is the list of the “eight prominent conservatives” who were members of the group that issued the report:

• Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.);
• Benjamin Ginsberg, a longtime Republican lawyer;
• Judge Thomas Griffith (retired), whom George W. Bush appointed to the D.C. Circuit appellate court;
• David Hoppe, chief of staff to former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.);
• Judge J. Michael Luttig (retired), whom George H.W. Bush appointed to the Fourth Circuit appellate court;
• Judge Michael McConnell, whom George W. Bush appointed to the Tenth Circuit appellate court;
• Theodore Olson, solicitor general under former President George W. Bush;
• Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Or, retired).

Sounds like a completely unbiased and fair group of statesmen, doesn’t it?

In reality, it looks more like the gang of intelligence agency hacks who determined that Hunter Biden’s laptop was most likely “Russian disinformation” shortly before the 2020 election.

Image: Crime scene tape by kjpargeter.

There’s a good reason that crime scenes are secured with yellow police line tape. It prevents criminals from tampering with and destroying evidence. In the case of the past two elections (2020 presidential and 2022 midterms), no such security measures were taken. In many cases, Democrats had full access to polling places and drop boxes, and had an army of “ballot harvesters” at their disposal. These conditions violated basic rules of evidence, in that the chain of custody was almost immediately broken. And when evidence is manipulated or destroyed, court cases attempting to rectify the transgressions are moot.

There are numerous reports of missing hard drives, thumb drives, and voter logs that are crucial to preparing successful court cases. The fraudsters know this, and the multitude of pre-election court cases brought by DNC lawyers such as Marc Elias further weakened election security measures in the name of combating “voter suppression.” Elias shrewdly exploited the Covid lockdown to attack ballot security rules and open the door to fraud and shenanigans by operatives in the battleground states that he targeted.

Elias didn’t try to hide his electoral machinations. In fact, it was as if he were taunting the GOP brass because he was well aware of their history of inaction and apathy with respect to aggressively countering these types of election-law cases. Elias gambled that the GOP would do next to nothing in opposition to his moves, and he was right.

Whether the GOP leadership’s pathetic response to Elias’s aggressive legal assault was deliberate or due to incompetence and indifference is up for debate. Americans deserve better, however, and should immediately demand universal voter ID laws. Virtually every Western country has such laws, and it’s a disgrace that the U.S. doesn’t. When it comes to election security, we are the laughingstock of the world, and deservedly so.

Michael A. Bertolone, M.S. is a past Executive V.P. of the Monroe County (N.Y) Law Enforcement Association, and a freelance writer in Rochester, NY. His other articles can be found at American Thinker and Substack.